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Re: Is it necessary to distinguish inclusiveness in possessive markers?

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Sunday, January 25, 2004, 17:40
Quoting Trebor Jung <treborjung@...>:

> Merhaba! > > My conlang Tsaan /tsa:n/ has a pronoun system like this: > I > we (excluding the listener) > we (including the listener) > you > yall > he/she > they(?I'll think about it) > > Is it necessary to include the feature of inclusiveness in possessive > markers? So do you say 'That's our-EXCL new house' vs. 'That's our-INCL new > house', or is that necessary? Could one tell from context the intended > meaning? In this case it's pretty obvious, but are there cases where context > cannot be used to determine the meaning?
I would expect a language that makes the incl~excl distinction in personal pronouns also to make it also in possessive ones, but it's hardly _necessary_. You can always disambiguate by circumlocutions if it's critical in context - just as you do in a lang like English which doesn't do the incl~excl distinction at all. Does that "he/she" cover also "it", or do you have something particularly evil brewing? ObMyConlang: The only of my conlangs with an incl~excl distinction, Steienzh, does uphold it with possessives. But then, from the POV of Steienzh grammar, possessive pronouns are just the possessive case of personal ones. Andreas

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Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>